Carrow Street
by Hemlock
Summary: Told entirely from Dr. Carlisle Cullen's point of view, this is another effort that takes the void within the pre-Bella Swan Era. As a doctor in the hospital, Dr Cullen saves lives. However, some patients aren't meant to be saved...
1. Overture

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Chapter One

Overture

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Nerve endings are too close here... I wonder if I should cut the other side... I believe my scalpel will be able to do that much of incision... there... not much blood coming out... blood pressure should maintain its current value, heartbeat is also steady... huh. I don't expect you to be here, Mr Haemorrhage. Let's patch you up... see, that's done with. Now, on with the stitches... Henry here should be able to do it...

"Dr Cullen."

I looked up from my animated fingers. Lola's gaze, mild but demanding, met mine, and she quickly pointed her chin toward the theatre. Operation theatre, actually. "We're waiting for you, doctor," she said, ready to turn as soon as she got her answer.

"Be right there," I muttered, standing and moving toward the sink. After I was done disinfecting my hands and arms, I entered the theatre, donned the gloves, and began what I had envisioned in my head minutes earlier. Not half an hour later, the deed was done, and the patient was fine. Another good deed done, and the nurses and the doctors quietly jubilated as the patient was wheeled away into the intensive care unit.

The family of the patient, Mrs Halifax and the son, Ron, had insisted on meeting me, but I pushed that job to Henry, again. He is, after all, the patcher, the stitcher, the consoler of my team, and he does it all wonderfully. I would have wanted, but I may only end up freaking them up. There is no need for fear after such an emotional ordeal.

Jack Halifax had had an accident, which somehow resulting his car to flip twice in the air before landing somewhere in a wide but rather shallow ditch, filled with water and soft earth. That had saved his life because if he had landed somewhere else, his skull would have caved in and the pieces of his skull would have lodged themselves within his frontal lobe. Never mind his arms and legs, which were doing rather fine aside from fractured at several spots. Head injuries are very dangerous, for humans and vampires alike.

We, of course, can take a harder beating compared to humans, but that's another story.

As I washed my hands and arms, slowly this time, my mind wandered into Jack Halifax's medical records. This was the first time he had been hospitalised, aside from the time that he caught a very bad case of chicken pox and had to be hospitalised, and that was a very long time ago, when he was nine. (He was now a healthy forty-six.) Now he was still in the post-operation stupor, induced by the anaesthesia, head and body bundled up.

The reason why I went through his medical records in my head was the fact that he only had to visit the hospital once before. Some people just have the good genes and good luck. The admin had to get him a new patient's folder out because the last one was issued thirty-odd years ago. He might, I thought, still be around if I came this way maybe thirty or forty years later.

That train of thought made me sigh, and once I was done cleaning and drying myself of the vaguely tempting smell of blood, I sauntered in a melancholic fashion toward the staff lounge. Once there, I didn't sit on one of the tables, but instead walked out to the small balcony they had. It overlooked the woods at the back of the hospital.

"Late night, Doc Cullen?" asked a familiar voice. Gwen, our night cleaner lady, had seen me and decided to greet me.

"You know me," I replied, shrugging. I didn't bother to turn around – she wouldn't have minded.

"How's Jack?" she asked.

"Nothing escapes you, Gwen." I turned and smiled at her.

She made a motion with her hand that said 'Never mind that'. "How is he?" she repeated.

"He's fine, Gwen," I consoled her. "We have a fine team on the table. He'll be good as new in no time."

"Where did the accident happen?" Gwen asked, as she pressed on the mop strainer. It made a sloshing sound, and funnily enough, it reminded me of my own hunger.

"Why don't you tell me, Gwen," I said, humouring her.

"Carrow Street?" My surprise must be very evident because she suddenly nodded in a sagely manner. "I should've known," she added most enigmatically.

"What should you have known?"

"Carrow Street, Doc Cullen. You're not familiar with that place?" she asked me in return.

"Carrow Street..." I rubbed my chin between my thumb and forefinger. "Sounds familiar to me. One of Forks' streets, I suppose, but not in the town centre. It's somewhere across town, to the west..."

"Suburban is the word, I believe," she said with a twinkle in her eye. Then the twinkle vanished as the corners of her lips dropped. "Well, if that's the case, I hope he gets well soon." She waved at me, and left with that smell which reminded me a lot of a cookie store – warm, sweet and inviting. I smiled, turned toward the dark woods, forgot about my chat with Gwen, and drank in the night.

Several hours later, I was in my car, homeward bound. The dark sky bled red dawn, and the sun rose.

Home is a very wonderful place that Esme had decorated minimally but tastefully. I could always count on her to decorate our home – no matter where it was – and each was a masterpiece in its own right. I once joked with Esme that every time us Cullens leave a home, the price would sky-rocket.

The kids were getting ready for school as I entered the house. It was already seven thirty in the morning, and thank goodness the sky was overcast. As much as I feared for their safety – not that they were not capable of protecting themselves – I would rather them keep learning, even if they had already learnt the subjects and had the facts branded beneath their eyelids.

"Can I skip school?" Surprisingly, that came from Edward. Since he personally came to me, I figured that he would want me to reply in my head.

_You wish. Go to school. It's not sunny._

His voice was low. "It's not because of the weather. I'm actually getting tired of school."

_Tell you what - _

Edward groaned audibly, and the rest of them stared at us in the hallway.

"Are you complaining about _me, _Edward?" Rosalie asked, her head cocked in a dangerous manner already.

"No, Planet Rosalie," Alice replied. "It's about him."

Emmet chuckled. "Well, that's a first."

Jasper was already doing what he knew best – what I referred to as _throwing the veil_ – this time it was a calm veil. I walked to him, held his shoulders and shook my head lightly. "No need," I told him. "He simply wants to skip school, and I was just beginning to tell him about the headmaster I once -"

Four groans swelled in unison, and faster than a blink of an eye they were all gone, the car engine roared between the trees. I smelt Esme behind me and felt her small hands crept up from my back.

"Not the headmaster tale again," she said. I could hear her smile. I turned and stared into her eyes.

"That's the only way to make them leave," I whispered into her ear, pulled her close, kissed the tip of her nose. "And the only way to have this place to ourselves."

"You know I'm not a morning person," she pouted beautifully. "I'm averse to the sun." Her arms wound tighter around my neck and pulled me down to her mouth. We connected in a slow, torturous kiss.

I let go, saying, "Neither am I. But I can change your mind, can't I?"

Then I showed her.

-

"You don't have to tidy up after every time we made love, you know," I told her as she walked past me, wrapped in a silk kimono. Her thighs flashed teasingly from between the silky folds and I raised an appreciative eyebrow as she bent over something and toiled over it for a moment.

"I know that for the next twenty years or so we won't probably have guests here. But it doesn't mean we can leave our home in shambles," she muttered, mostly to herself. But I know that that was also for me. I rose and waited after she had completed whatever she was doing and when she straightened herself, I grabbed her from her back and gave her cool neck a kiss. The fleeting sunlight warmed up her skin some, and we stood there, content and happy.

"Do you know the Halifaxes?" I asked her suddenly.

"Mmm... no. Are they tasty?"

"Esme," I chided her in mock horror. "Thou shalt not crave thy neighbour," I continued in a mocking deep voice.

"No matter," Esme replied lightly. "So what else is new?"

"Should I laugh?"

"You missed your cue, but laugh into this." And she turned around so that my lips met hers.

"Really," I said, a breathless minute later. "So you don't recognise them?"

"The Halifaxes?" She frowned, trying to recall in that pretty head of hers. "Nope. I'm not exactly knocking down every door in Forks and trying to get to know everybody... unlike Teri Wilkinson. She's trying too hard to be loved and recognised by everyone, it's so sad to watch..."

"Anyway," I cut her trail of words, "her husband – Jack Halifax – had an accident last night." Esme's eyes widened in alarm.

"How is he? I hope he's okay."

I nodded. "We fixed him quite well. He's already out of the danger by now." I peeked at the ormolu clock that sat on the side table.

"That's good to know," she said, pulling away from me for a moment. "Then why are you still worried?"

"Worried?" I asked her, trying to deny it. Esme threw me a gaze that I could not dodge. Slowly I had to admit with a shrug. "I am. Just a teeny bit worried, you know."

"Well, then, you might want to see the patient tonight."

"I might scare him to cardiac arrest," I teased her.

"You had me at cardiac arrest, and I'm still here," she teased me back.

I decided to take Esme's advice that evening – _not_ scaring them to cardiac arrest – and drove to the hospital, thinking nothing but Esme and her words. Maybe it was time that I start meeting my patients. I had been avoiding them like the plague – well, there might be a small truth in there – and that was rather unfair for them.

As I was about to walk into the ICU, Lola stopped me.

She was young – she only had two years' of experience in Seattle – but she had proven herself to be very, very able and diligent. Patients had no bad words for her, except those who had issues with authority. Lola exuded that, although she was rather small, shapely and nicely built, and her face was the look of determination, with her small but sharp chin and the firm green eyes.

"Dr Cullen, where are you going?"

"I want to see Mr Halifax, Lola. Is there something?"

"Well, yes. Mr Halifax has been discharged this afternoon by Dr Otis."

Henry, I thought. "Okay, then, never mind. I'll just go about making my usual rounds."

"Dr Otis is in the lounge if you want to talk to him," she said, almost dismissively, before turning around to speak with the nurses in the station.

_Well!_ I thought. _Who is the doctor and who is the nurse? _But I took it all in with good humour, and since Henry _was_ in my mind, I headed to the doctors' lounge. Henry sat there with Gwen, who seemed to be dispensing another one of her advises, and Henry was listening intently, or pretended to, with his forehead deeply creased.

"Hello, Henry, Gwen," I greeted them. They acknowledged me, and immediately resumed.

"So," Gwen said with a satisfied look on her face, "there you are! It's nasty, I tell you. Nasty!"

Henry acquiesced with a proper expression that twisted his fair face. "It is nasty. But Gwen, you don't know all that to be real, do you? I mean, it _is_ rather far-fetched."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "You doctors – yes, that includes you, Doc Cullen! - should really think broader! There are more to this world than scalpels and drugs. It's not impossible to have that happening at this day and age. Who knows? Vampires and werewolves could exist in this very town!"

I tried to hide my strangled gasp with a stuttering laugh and a scandalised expression. How in the world that the idea entered sweet Gwen's head at that exact moment was one of the mysteries of the universe that would never be solved.

I knew nobody would be able to discover us. But each and every day passing is like the Sword of Damocles swinging above our heads. We could only hope that our respective swords would not fall too soon.

Satisfied with our lack of response, she turned and proceeded to the hallway, leaving Henry and I in silence. Henry, meanwhile, was looking very sceptical.

Quickly I made myself recover from the shock. "What was that about?" I asked Henry. He was already poking at his third soy drink.

Henry Otis was a tall, slender man with the built of a marathon runner. Everything about him was either long or lean, and sometimes both. No wonder, then, he was a hit with female – and some male – patients. This was the reason why I would rather him become the one who breaks the news, so that it would be easier for the immediate families to swallow. His baby blue eyes would ease the weight of the news, as would his warm touch. Like what he was doing to me now.

He tapped at my hand before saying, "Jack Halifax got discharged this afternoon."

I nodded.

"The family came, and this funny little guy tagged along. Bushy eyebrows beneath a ski cap. Jack introduced that fellow as his uncle. The little fellow then proceeded to wave around a handful of bush in the room, and burnt something that stung my nose – makes me want to sneeze all the time – I guess that's what they call incense. Funny little ceremony, but whatever rocks their boat... Then they left."

The straw began catching air instead of soy milk inside the box, and Henry rattled it, as if he was only satisfied when he could no longer hear water sloshing in there.

"And naturally, Gwen has something to say about it," I said, as her scent disappeared. She must have gone to the lobby or someplace else.

Henry jovially slapped my shoulders. "You know our Gwen well! As soon as the family left the building, she began talking with all the nurses in the nurses' station. I passed by and commented on their idle gossiping, but that was my error – she turned to me and proceeded to present her points, perspectives and 'facts', so to speak, to which I have no other rebuttal but nods and mutters."

"What are her points?"

"Well," he said, gleefully rubbing his big hands together. "You're ready? She thinks that Jack Halifax is cursed."

My eyebrows rose involuntarily. Henry noticed and snickered. "See! I told you that it's far-fetched!"

"One accident doesn't mean somebody's cursed," I said with a smile. "Our Gwen has way too much idle time in her hands."

"And the devil has jobs for idle hands," Henry added. "You want to hear more?"

I nodded. My rounds wouldn't start in another half an hour.

"She says that the location of the accident was explanation enough." Henry nodded conspiratorially as he chucked that soy drink box into a trash can some ten feet away – it fell in with a muted thud. "And I said to her, 'If I were to have an accident there, would I be cursed, too?' She boxed my ear! Would you believe it, she boxed my ear!"

"Why, then, does she think that the location was explanation enough?" I asked him.

"Oh, come _on_!" Henry said, still in a very humorous mood. "Carrow Street, man! You don't know?" Then he turned his attention to a small row of soy drink boxes in front of him. There were three in a row, all empty, and he took up one and took another aim at the trash can.

Suddenly some words stirred in my head. Like poking around a long-forgotten attic, the words were stirred, came together and fell apart slowly, spinning like stirred dust under a ray of light. Slowly the sentences were completed in a flash. It was childish, I heard it somewhere before, but I'd forgotten where...

_Narrow, narrow,_

_the Streets of Carrow,_

_where the grasses_

_will never grow -_

I didn't realise that I was muttering it until Henry shook my shoulder.

"Where have you heard that?" he asked me, all humour now gone, confusion instead were ablaze upon his face. "Man, you spooked me enough to throw off my aim!"

"Somewhere... a long time ago, I guess." I said evasively. "Did I sing it out loud? Sorry."

"Last I heard it was my Grandma singing to me, as a warning – what else? Folks back then really knew how to discipline kids through scare tactics." Henry looked rather sober now, his face now serious. "Whenever I hear that nursery rhyme, my hand would break up in goose bumps." He lifted one bronzed arm. "See?"

I did see. They were on the verge of disappearing. "What is the rhyme about, anyway?"

Henry screwed his eyes in an effort of recollection. Then he sighed aloud as he stood up. "I can't remember... funnily enough." He made a start as he looked at his wristwatch. "Holy smokes, it's fifteen to seven!"

I suddenly was reminded of my own rounds. "Well, see you tomorrow, Henry," I said.

"Yeah, see you too. It's game night, gonna watch it with Chief Swan. You wanna place bets?"

"I already placed mine," I replied, somewhat enigmatically. Alice was certain that the Gators won. Yes, not _would win_, but _won_. And not wanting Henry becoming a compulsive gambler, I would not want to tell him that.

-

I went on with my rounds until five in the morning. Lola would hover in the background, but even she could not resist Morpheus' call. Gwen was already gone at ten. She complained about her back, which she said was an unpleasant souvenir from her trip in Caribbean when she went out kayaking with her husband. I gave her some weak painkillers and told her to come back in the morning if the pain became worse.

"Like I don't know the drill!" she had remarked.

Emmet called me to confirm that my bet had been processed. Although Alice had offered to give the exact score so that I could win bigger, I said no. It was enough to have won.

I found myself walking into a male ward. Everyone was either asleep or drugged, I thought. They were all good. As I turned around I thought I saw movement in one of the beds. Not one to miss something and regret it later, I walked toward the last bed, bed No. 7. I reached at the patient report at the end of the bed.

His name was Gideon Smith. I then recalled who this patient was. He was hospitalised after he had a minor stroke. Today was his second day in the ward. I noted his vitals as shown on the medical report. All were normal, for someone who had just had a minor stroke. Mr Smith should be better in the morning.

I then turned my attention to the patient himself. I found myself to be rather surprised. Yesterday, Mr Smith looked rather fit for a fifty-year-old. Now, as I saw him under the light, and with the aid of my sharp sights, I had to say that there was something wrong with him. He lay there, asleep, but some parts of his limbs would jerk now and then. To say that he was in the deep phase of REM would be not too far off, but the eyeballs under his eyelids were not moving.

I listened to his heartbeat. It was erratic and unstable, that couldn't be because of the drugs... maybe Mr Smith was having a nightmare. I decided to wake him up.

"Mr Smith?" I gently shook his arm. When that didn't work I shook it harder.

His eyes popped open, stared around him, and grabbed my hand. All within two heartbeats. Astounding speed, for a human being. And a normal man would have winced from this hold, I reminded myself, so I made that pained expression and let out a small exclamation.

"Are you fine, Mr Smith?" I asked him, unconvincingly trying to add some pain in my voice. I rubbed my wrist where he had squeezed it. "I saw you fidget in your bed."

He looked at me as if I was an alien or something, his eyes darting this way and that into the shadows, before settling upon mine. Then slowly he heaved a long sigh. "Bad dream, doctor, pardon me." He tried to look at my hand, but the neon lights outside lent very little light to the ward, to which I was thankful. "Did I hurt your wrist?"

I let out a nervous laugh as I continued to rub my wrist. "Yeah... some. But it's fading." And for added effect I swung my hand at the wrist side to side, as if relieving the pain. "You do have a powerful grip," I added. "Golf?"

He laughed. It sounded hasty and forced. "No, just healthy living."

A silence fell, a very long one. It stretched until it became unnaturally uncomfortable for both of us.

"I probably should let you back to sleep," I hesitantly began.

"You should," he agreed, quiet command lay heavy in his words. I concealed my surprise with a wide smile.

"Sleep well, Mr Smith."

He whispered these words as I stepped across the ward threshold, thinking I wouldn't be able to hear it:

_"If tomorrow comes."_

_-  
_

I decided to leave the hospital later than usual because the weather looked very glum today. Fat clouds raced across the darkened sky endlessly, and the sun peeped only now and then. That would be safe enough, I thought.

So Lola was surprised to meet me at the nurses' station as she prepared to end her shift. "I thought you've left, doctor," she said as she filled in her night form. Something the hospital had us night shifters to fill up before the end of our shift. "Normally I won't see up until later this evening."

I shrugged. "Look at the weather. I don't want to be caught in the middle of a heavy downpour with my car."

"Aw, c'mon, doctor. Your car's a Lexus!" She pointed at my car, parked a few yards away from the main entrance. It gleamed white and sullen, as if hurt by Lola's accusing finger.

"Yeah... well, it has some problem of its own," I said, not interested in exchanging my non-existent auto problems.

She then left with a friend and I decided to wait for Gwen. After all, I had promised her that I'd be the one to check up on her. But as I saw the sky began to clear up, I got a little worried. I called her – seven thirty was not too early by her standards – and got through. She told me that her back was okay now after her husband had massaged her back.

I hung up, thinking that I could try that with Esme – then again maybe not.

So I quickly filled up the form and was about to leave when Keegan, the nurse in station, received an emergency signal from within the hospital.

"It's Mr Smith!" he screamed. "Is Doctor Julian Tan around?"

Julian quickly was alerted. He was a small, tightly-knit Asian man, with dark hair and darker eyes. I caught up with him. "You need help?" I jogged while he practically tore down the corridor toward the west wing.

"As much as I can," he muttered as we entered the ward together. Wide-awake eyes stared at us in confusion and fear. The nurses had already pulled together the separating curtains around Mr Smith's bed and we entered through them. Julian took the paddles from a male nurse and said aloud: "Clear!"

There was a high-pitched sound that increased in volume and Gideon Smith's body rose painfully with a distinct crack, once. Then Mr Smith was motionless. His face was blue, and the ECG showed three flat lines.

"Again!" said Julian. "Clear!"

Again the rising electric buzz was heard, and the sickening, empty thud responded. The lines stayed their unerring courses. This went on for three more times. Finally Julian blinked in defeat, gave the paddles to one of the nurses, peered at his wristwatch, and said in a weary, confused voice:

"Patient's death at 8 a.m." He looked at me, to which I nodded in assent.

I could have told him that earlier – there was not even the smallest beat that I could detect, unlike what I had encountered before, years ago, with Esme. After what had happened with Esme, I had learnt to attune myself to the smallest beat, the smallest quiver a heart muscle could make, in order to save lives.

Mr Smith's had been as quiet as a graveyard.

Edward noticed my silence as we drove to our hunting ground. The weather was nice – for a vampire – the mood within the car was brimming with anticipation; everyone else was excited. The exception was me.

"Is work bothering you?" Esme said suddenly, putting her hand over mine that was holding the gear stick. "You're quiet and frowning."

"Kind of," I said, staring at Edward through the rear view mirror. _Did you make her do that?_

Edward shook his head as he turned his attention back to Alice's chatter.

"Well? Aren't you going to tell me?" she asked, turning to me.

I nodded. "It's nothing, really. Mr Gideon Smith died of heart failure this morning."

Esme covered her mouth in surprise. "Gideon Smith died? That's horrible."

"You know him?" I asked.

"Honey, he's – was, a big time real estate agent in Seattle. Remember Seattle?"

Something in my head cleared. Gideon Smith, real estate agent. Where have I seen it? Slowly, a scene in my mind formed. A business card in my palm... I turned to look at the person who placed it... a firm, almost crushing handshake...

"Of course!" I slapped my head. "We almost bought a house in Seattle, but then Alice came along and screwed up the deal."

"Hey!" Alice said with a high voice.

"I can still recall the look on his face when Alice flat-out said in front of him that the house would be gone to the termites in less than a month," I added with a smile.

"That was true!" she moaned. "And besides, Seattle has too many sunny days. We don't like that."

"Esme, dear, I don't know whether you'd recognise Mr Smith, but he had looked a lot thinner than before. That was why I didn't recognise him last night – he has grown thin." I paused, trying to compare the Gideon I saw in Seattle with the one I saw last night. "Not just thin like losing five pounds or so – it's like he lost thirty pounds in one night."

Alice nodded. Then her eyes turned hazy. "He's dead already, right?"

"He died this morning, Alice – eight sharp." I stared at her through the mirror, grinning. "What, do you see him running around?"

She shook her head. "They're going to bury him tomorrow – Dr Julian, is it?" I nodded. "He'll be signing the death certificate later today. The cause of death is heart failure."

I frowned. That was a very weak COD verdict. Not that it really mattered, but sometimes 'heart failure' was used for cases with unidentifiable causes, especially when the dead had been previously healthy. "He did have a stroke earlier," I said as I took a left turn into the woods.

"Wait – there is something else." She sat still for a minute or so as Rosalie looked at anywhere but her. Jasper, Emmet and Edward were the only ones who did. Esme was focusing on the road, as was I.

Alice stirred. "Whoa. That's weird," she said, letting out a sigh.

"What is it?" Jasper asked.

"The mourners will get a surprise tomorrow." She smiled at all of us. "A very ugly surprise."

-

_To be continued... and do please review..._


	2. After the Funeral

_Author's Note: Oh my gawd, finally I managed to squeeze this one out. Pardon me, guys, but that's the only way I can see it as I fight deadlines, impossible people and even more demanding situations. I hope you guys like it. This is for all of you with my apologies!_

-

Chapter Two

After The Funeral

-

Our hunt ended several hours after the funeral should have. Out of courtesy, I had Alice looked for the Smiths' number and made a call to them. I was hoping to directly speak with the widow. Predictably enough, nobody picked up the phone. I tried to call Julian instead.

"Hello, Julian," I said. "You're at the funeral, I suppose."

"Yeah," he whispered. "Can you hold a sec?" I said yes, and he must have muffled the phone as he walked to somewhere more private – or maybe just at the Smiths' porch. "Sorry about that."

"No problem. But you sound – well, tired." He did. He sounded strained and confused.

He let out a sigh. "It was quite a scandal, really."

"The post-mortem?"

"No, everything."

I sat down as my whole family settled down too, except for Emmet, who turned on the TV and found a sports channel that he liked. He turned it down, though.

"What do you mean _everything_? Did a pregnant woman suddenly announce Mr Gideon Smith as the father of her baby during memorial service?"

"I wish that had happened instead," Julian said. I heard some background noise – probably he was sitting down.

"I was there when they held a post-mortem. After all, he died within 24 hours under my care. Talk about pressure! The only COD they could find was cardiac arrest. We reasoned that his heart was already weak from the stroke he had earlier in the morning. No traces of drugs or poison were found in his body, so foul play has been ruled out. My diagnoses were also all precise. So I'm not at fault here, too. But the medical examiner noted something else."

"What else could there be?" I asked him.

He chuckled drily. "Unlike Lady Macbeth who said 'I never knew the old man could have so much blood,' our Mr Smith had very little blood."

"Blood anticoagulant?" I offered. "That kind of blood consistency is not easy to miss."

"Nothing that resembles blood thinner was found within the bloodstream or anywhere else. And it was not the blood consistency, but its _volume _that worried me," Julian said slowly.

"What?"

He went on. "And it doesn't stop there. Everywhere in his body there was significantly lesser blood than it should be at the time of death."

I was lucky to have this conversation _after_ my hunger was satiated. If I hadn't, my family would have seen a very dark-eyed man sitting here, trying to make himself comfortable.

"Well, you do have to compensate the loss of blood and liquid in your calculations for the final weight," I slowly reasoned. "You don't get perfect figures all the time."

"Yes, but _significantly_? His brain had shrunk near half its former size. Lungs were totally shrunken. Even after when we had finished the post mortem, there were no blood marks on the surface of his body. Come to think of it, that was the first time we cleaned up faster than usual."

Blood marks are blotches that appear when a dead body is left to lie on a certain position for a long while. Following gravity, blood would move to the lowest part of a body after the heart had stopped beating, and it would appear as reddish or bluish large mark on the skin. To have none of these marks, no matter how small, was rather extraordinary. "Are you trying to say that this man was, somehow, losing blood? Even after death?"

Julian made an exasperated noise. "And at a very rapid rate, too! That's quite impossible, right? Well, right after we had released Mr Smith's body, his family claimed him. Marley Quiver took the body to his place - Quivers' Undertaker Services – late last night and he had decided to do the make-up early next morning - today. But then the Smiths got a call from the undertaker in the morning, telling them that they needed to come immediately. When they had arrived Marley showed them why. _Gideon Smith had dried up completely._"

Eyes moved here and there as Edward's and Rosalie's eyes widened with shock. Alice's showed only wonder, while Jasper sat in reflection. Emmet – was silently enjoying his time with the TV. Esme shook her head now and then.

"Completely? As in _mummified_?"

"That's another way of seeing it."

"In one _night_?"

"Nine hours, to be exact."

I closed my eyes, trying to imagine what force on earth could alter a recently-dead body into a mummy-like state in less than twenty-four hours. As far as I knew, there are two important scientific rules. The first rule is that you have to have extremely dry atmosphere to mummify _anything_. The second rule is that you need to be careful with the inner organs lest they would spoil and rot the whole body. These organs would have to be removed to avoid that from happening.

The first rule was already broken – Forks is one of the wettest spots in America. The second rule, was, however, might still be intact. "Am I wrong in assuming that the organs were removed, Julian?"

"You would be wrong," Julian said matter-of-factly. "I mention before that the organs had shrunken, remember? Well, I found them all, shrunken, dried up, but all still recognisable and accountable for."

A scary possibility slowly revealed itself to me. "Julian, did you happen to find any bite marks on the body? Or maybe puncture-like marks?"

Esme mouthed a question to me: _Is that possible? _I could neither shrug nor nod.

Julian took his time answering this question, which made me rather anxious. Finally he answered, "That's a pretty weird question, but I believe we found no such thing. Why?"

"Well, you never know what college students are up to these days," I replied lamely. Now I could shake my head. Esme smiled with relief. "So, Julian, in that condition, was the body displayed during the funeral?"

"I guess Mrs Smith did not want to risk scandal," Julian replied. "She had decided to cancel all the funeral arrangements and had a cremation held for her late husband instead."

And lose the body of evidence. But there was no proof of foul play, Julian had seen to that. Maybe Mrs Smith simply did not want to disgrace her husband's memory by displaying his strange final state. That was a logical choice to be made, anyway, if you were keen to save face.

"Did they happen to have left the body under an automatic hand dryer?" I asked, running out of sensible questions.

Julian had to laugh. "If they did, it would be the size of Texas," he replied, half-choked with his laughter. "Oh, sorry," he added, maybe to one of the mourners as his voice dropped its volume. "My wife's leaving – I am, too. No, honey, I'm not delighting in the Smiths' sorrow!"

"Please extend my condolences to the Smiths, Julian," I told him. "And say hello to your wife."

"Okay," he said. I heard him still trying to placate his wife as he hung up. Alice meanwhile was smiling widely.

"So this is your surprise," Rosalie said.

"Not mine," Alice said, twirling a lock of her hair with one finger, "but Mr Smith's. They should've buried him the day before."

"Why do you think that another vampire has done that?" Esme asked me.

"Well," I said, "it's all almost similar. Blood loss, weight loss, all that."

"Dad, that's a succubus, not a vampire," Edward said. "Besides, Mr Smith's a fifty-year old man. That age is no succubus bait. And they don't mummify men, they only tire them to the brink of death."

"But he was a nice-looking fifty-year old," Alice mused to herself. "Sad to see him go that way. Oh wait, that's interesting."

But before I could ask her what was interesting, she turned, skipped and left.

When the children had all retired to their respective rooms, I went upstairs to my office, took a few books, and began reading. Most of them were about strange diseases and viral outbreaks that defied explanation and efforts to cure them. But I could not find anything that matched what had happened to Gideon Smith line by line. I put away the last book, leant back on my chair and stared at the walls, where I had placed most of my paintings. Usually it would bring me peace. Tonight, however, my mind was buzzing with speculations and assumptions.

Those damned, restless, angry flies...

And the biggest, noisiest of them all was the scene from Gideon Smith's final night in the ward. The words, never meant for anyone else, puzzled me.

_If tomorrow comes_...

Was he expecting death already? If so, then why? What killed him? Julian's autopsy showed no evidence of foul play except for the unexplained water and blood loss part... and the look of the body afterwards. If it was poison, then it had to work very, very fast – drying out all the moisture in every cell of the body in less than 24 hours.

Maybe it was something new that the autopsy team could not identify... because I was very sure it was not another vampire. Hungry as a vampire may be, a corpse was just too much to handle. Logically and, well, with a little vampire commonsense, corpse blood is less nutritious. Like any normal human, we would rather have our meal steaming hot rather than a mouldy ten-day old leftover. Fresh blood does _not_ age very well.

I leant back in my chair, eyes wide as I heard Edward play something... ah. That was the Third Nocturne by Chopin. It fitted tonight perfectly; a cool, quiet, wet evening, interrupted only by the raindrops falling upon the trees and roofs. I swear, if Edward were a living person, and would he have made it through the Spanish flu, he might have become a legendary pianist.

It was already midnight, and Edward's playing had became slower and slower, and so was his piano music selection. Now he was playing selections from Satie's _Gymnopedié_ that would have lulled even an insomniac to sleep. It was slow, ponderous movement, almost no loud notes, and all _sostenuto_. The notes managed to create an illusion of weightlessness throughout the piece.

Throughout the piece... the same melody over and over again...

My hand shot out to the telephone and quickly dialled the nurses' station number. It was not unusual for a doctor to call in the middle of the night and ask for a patient's information. This time I wanted to ask about Mr Gideon Smith's information.

Luckily it was Lola who picked it up. "Well, doctor, aren't we impatient," she said in that monotone of hers.

"Hello Lola, just wondering if you would send over copies of the late Mr Smith's medical records?"

"Is there something wrong?"

"No," I said, "I just want to go over his medical history."

"I hope Dr Julian is not in any trouble," she said. Well, what do you know, still waters do run deep.

I smiled. "He isn't, don't worry."

Lola finally agreed to send the medical history to me via email, and I received it shortly afterwards.

To tell the truth, I half-expected it. It was a mere four-page report. The first remark was about a sprained ankle at the age of seven. The next one was a ski accident where he skinned his head and face in his twenties. And the last entry was the day he had a stroke: two days ago.

In my mind, I compared this to Mr Halifax's medical history. I didn't know if this could be called a coincidence, but there were quite a number of similarities to deny that possibility. Both men were extraordinarily healthy and were hospitalised for only once or twice every two decades or so.

I flipped both of the reports. On the cover, I saw the last similarity.

-

The next evening, as soon as I entered the hospital, I looked for Henry. I found him making his rounds, looking rather happy. We chatted about the game before I finally asked him the question I had been dying to ask since yesterday.

"Do you realise that Mr Halifax and the late Mr Smith were neighbours?"

Henry raised one thick eyebrow. "Their families are on good terms, but their houses are far apart. Jack's house is –"

"I know where Jack's and the Smiths' houses are. I meant they lived on the same street when they were young."

"So? Is there a penalty against that?"

I pulled him toward the staff lounge. It was early evening, and most of the hospital staff were out having dinner or were in and about the hospital, so the lounge was rather empty. I sat down and bid him to do the same.

"Jack and Gideon lived on the same street when they were young. Their families were neighbours."

Henry gave me his trademark sidelong glance: a slight raise of the eyebrow, the eye underneath it slightly wider than the other, his lips open slightly in a mocking gape, and a brief turn of the head. "And – is that criminal?"

"I don't know," I said. "But they lived on Carrow Street," I added quickly seeing him rising off the chair. Henry turned to look at me again, but this time his expression was puzzled. I went on:

"There were not many who lived on Carrow Street back then. Altogether there were only seven families, including Jack's and Gideon's. When I tried to look for the rest of the families, I came to a wall. A dead end."

"The Smiths and the Halifaxes are often equated with the Forks' royal families." Here Henry's voice dropped to a whisper. "Their families were amongst those who had their hands in founding Forks." Henry shrugged noncommittally. "It's no surprise that you will have a hard time asking around. They are a very private set of families and hate to be poked upon."

Pretty much like mine, I thought. "You mean I won't be able to find anything on them? At all?" That would spell the end of my research.

Henry shook his head. "I mean you would do very well not to start with the library or the hall of records. After the war, some of the records were lost. The archival managements reasoned that in the process of trying to conserve those records and documents, some were lost due to weather or by careless handling."

"That's grossly careless of them," I reflected. "What period are we talking about here?"

"Why the sudden interest in them?" Henry asked, suddenly looking guarded and tense.

I debated whether I should tell him about my ideas, and decided –

"Well, I thought that after what had happened to the late Mr Smith, I wondered whether what had happened to his body was caused by his early childhood environment," I lied casually.

Actually, if one read between the lines, one would realise that I was actually telling the truth. Just not the outright, in-your-face truth. And with that lie-truth, Henry and I explored the possibility of the late Mr Smith's childhood environment: whether it could have brought on this strange event. But we got nowhere, except for lead paints and heavy metals in pipe water.

I wondered, as the evening faded into midnight, whether I was reading too much between the lines, or that I needed a long, long holiday. As dawn approached, I prepared myself to return to my hideout, where Esme awaited with promises of companionship, and maybe, she would help clear my head.

As I stepped out into the morning air, the usually tranquil atmosphere was shattered by the pained wails of an ambulance siren, increasing as it entered the hospital compound and screeched to a halt not far from where my car was parked. Out of the back came two paramedics, whose years of experience made pulling the stretcher out of the ambulance look like child's play. On the stretcher, as it passed by me, was a frail-looking old man, whose hand suddenly clutched mine in an incongruously tight grip that the paramedics had to halt suddenly.

I stared at this old man, who stared back at me with cloudy eyes and quivering lips. His agitated face was a tapestry of pain, both physical and psychological. His other hand went to the oxygen mask that covered his nose and mouth and with one determined pull, it came off.

"It's never too late," he suddenly said in a great outrush of air.

The first paramedic tried to put the mask back on, but the old man pushed it aside. All the while his hand never let mine go. He stared at me, his expression almost pleading amidst all the pain.

"Sometimes it is," I blurted out. "But we make the best of it."

I didn't know what made me say those things. But somehow it made the old man grew less agitated, and he sort of nodded. A high beep ensued and the paramedics realised that this old man's time was running out. They rushed him down the corridor and directly into the ER, and I was left gaping mentally.

"Hey doc," said someone over my shoulder. Shane Rivers, the driver, was standing there. He shook his head. "Poor fellow. I agree that nobody knows when one's time's up, but you don't want to go out looking like hell."

I personally found that remark was rather insensitive, but to hear it from Shane was rather surprising.

Shane was born in La Push, but his family left for Seattle, before he returned and settled down here in Forks. Either Shane was somehow left out of the wolves' Rolodex for immediate phasing, or the big city Seattle had blunted his connections with his heritage. Either way, he was always considerate and patient, unlike the werewolves I normally scented at nights roaming the edges of our borders. Also, he had no wolf smell, or stench, as Rosalie would have preferred it.

"That old man's dying," I began, my voice unnecessarily harsh, "and you could have said something else, but you chose to comment on his looks."

Shane looked at me as if I was the one who had said something inappropriate. "Do you know who that was?" he asked me instead.

"It doesn't matter –"

"That was Mr. Jack Halifax. His wife found him in the bath looking like that. She didn't recognise him at first! But luckily she noticed something – he had tattoos on both of his arms, and this old man had those. And the old man began to lose consciousness. She had to call us in and here we are. Doc. Doc? You okay?"

I went home feeling like a sort of cloud was hanging over me. It obscured everything that I needed to know and see concerning this whole thing. Esme knew the moment my car drove in that something was deeply amiss.

"What is it?"

I sighed as I lay my head on her lap. "Mr Jack Halifax has been pronounced dead this morning at eight," I said in a rather cold, electronic tone.

Her beautiful wide eyes stared down at me with shock. "What? How? What happened?"

I moved my head side to side. "They're looking into it right now. Kenneth is leading the post-mortem."

Kenneth Wyndham was one of the hospital's most senior doctors. He was once described by Gwen 'as unpredictable as the weather', and that was quite true. He kept his judgments all to himself, and once in a blue moon he gave a comment. However, for all his eccentricities, he kept the hospital running like clockwork.

I told Esme about how Mrs Halifax found her late husband and how she almost did not recognise him. "You say old man?" Esme asked.

"Yes."

"Are you saying that he's aged, then dies?"

I remained motionless. That had to be the only explanation here. And what was that with his final words? _It's never too late_?

-


End file.
